u also lose
Your right to rank, on Memory's shining scrolls,
With those, your comrades, who made haste to choose
The willing service asked of loyal souls;
From all who gave such tribute of the heart
Your name will stand apart.

I think you cannot know what meed of shame
Shall be their certain portion who pursue
Pleasure "as usual" while their country's claim
Is answered only by the gallant few.
Come, then, betimes, and on her altar lay
Your sacrifice to-day!

O. S.

* * * * *

UNWRITTEN LETTERS TO THE KAISER.

No. VII.

(_From the PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC._)

_Bordeaux._

Sire,--You will pardon me, I know, if for a moment I break in upon the
serious occupations and meditations in which your time must be spent. I
like to picture you to myself in the midst of your Staff, working out
for them and your armies great problems of strategy and devising those
movements which, so far, have overwhelmed not your foes so much as the
minds of your fellow-countrymen. You too, Sire, sanguine and impetuous
as is your nature, are no doubt beginning to realise that a great
nation--let us say France, for example--is not to be overcome by mere
shouting and the waving of sabres, or by the making of impassioned
speeches in which God, having been acclaimed as an ally, is encouraged
to perform miracles for the benefit of the Prussian arms. I do not deny
that your soldiers are brave and that your armies are well equipped; but
our Frenchmen too have guns and bayonets and swords and shells and know
how to make use of them, and their portion of courage is no smaller than
that of the Prussians, or even of the Bavarians whom you have lately
been vaunting. Moreover--and this you had perhaps over-looked--they have
something which is deadlier and more enduring than shot and shell and
steel--the unconquerable spirit which leaps up in the hearts of men who
are gathered to defend their country from invasion and their national
existence from destruction.

Oh, Sire, how little you have understood France and her people; how
little you have understood the minds and motives of men! "France," your
Professors and your Generals told you, "is degenerate; her population is
smaller than ours; she has lost her skill in fighting and her courage;
she has no culture, never having heard of TREITSCHKE and having
neglected the inspired writings of NIETZSCHE; she will be an